geocoder.ca sued by Canada Post

Canada Post has filed suit against geocoder.ca in Federal Court. Geocoder.ca provides a crowd sourced Canadian post code database, available as Open Data under ODC’s ODbL.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic CIPPIC will represent geocoder.ca, and you can help by donating to their legal defense fund.

Details can be found with the announcement on the geocoder.ca web site.

Weekly OSM Summary #40

March 26th, 2012 – April 9th, 2012

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

  • The OSM database is back in read and write mode since last Thursday. Thanks to the Admins for their incredible work to move everything to the new server! The changes that will be made to the dataset due to the license change will take place in the coming days and will be running in the background. Also, you can find the last CC-BY-SA OSM planet file here.
  • “All I Want for OpenStreetMap is …“? Some thoughts and wishes from Mikel and Kate for OSM.
  • The organization Development Seed would like to create some new contribution tools for OSM. You can help here!
  • Which JOSM version do you use?
  • Frederik released a JOSM plugin to record and store data in a separate database. Read more about it here.
  • A new Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) project report from Indonesia.
  • A blog article about tracing OSM data in the Sahel.
  • Almost all videos and slides of the German FOSSGIS & OSM 2012 conference are online. You can find them here (of course in German).
  • Pascal wrote a blog post about the geographical distribution of the newly released OSM GPS points. Further Steven created a really nice HeatMap from all points.
  • A new blog post by Martijn about “Detecting Highway Trouble in OpenStreetMap“.
  • Cyclestreets published an “OpenStreetMap community mapping guide – for Cycling Scotland“.
  • After the OSM 3D workshop in Garching (Germany), the first 3D Map (OSM2World) has been published. You can read the announcement here.
  • With Comapp you can create your own OSM web maps with an audio marker. Try it out here.
  • A Youtube video about an indoor evacuation simulation based on MATSim and OSM data.
  • With YAPIS (Yet Another Point of Interest Submitter) a further web site to add POIs to OSM is online.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

License change update: getting it right

With the new server successfully installed by our sysadmin team, we’re now onto the second part of our migration – the data ‘redaction’ work required to move to the Open Database License. We promised our first progress report next week, but lots of people have been asking, so here’s an update four days early.

The code changes to the OpenStreetMap API have been completed and successfully reviewed. openstreetmap.org is therefore ready to distribute the new data. (Thanks to Matt Amos for the code and Tom Hughes for the review work.)

The next part is the ‘redaction bot’. This is the piece of code that, for an area of OpenStreetMap data, goes through and redacts (removes/hides) any data that isn’t compatible with the new licence. This is the most crucial part of the whole process: we aim not to retain data whose creators haven’t given permission for it to be distributed under the Open Database License, and conversely, not to inadvertently delete anything from the vast majority which is compatible.

Since Wednesday we’ve been running tests against real-world data (thanks to Frederik Ramm for help with this). We’re not yet 100% happy with the results, so we are continuing to work on the code. As you would expect, we will not set the bot running until we are absolutely confident that it is producing accurate results. With the four-day Easter weekend just beginning, we currently expect that this will be next week. This puts us a few days behind schedule, but we owe it to our mappers to get this right.

If you’re a developer, you can help fix the currently failing tests: check out the code at https://github.com/zerebubuth/openstreetmap-license-change. If you’re a mapper, this gives you a few more days to get your area shipshape! And if you’re a data consumer, you can, of course, continue to use the data under our existing license, CC-BY-SA 2.0.

We’ll have a further update next week and, in any case, before the bot starts running.

API Read – Write returns

The sysadmin team completed the data base migration to the new DB server on schedule during the the morning of 04 April 2012. The API is now back to normal, Read – Write operation. Now the final steps of the license upgrade will proceed as outlined in the March – April service schedule announcement

Other items of possible interest as the license upgrade process proceeds:

osm.org map tile generation will recommence within the next few hours.

Replication diffs during the license upgrade period have started after community requests. These cc-by-sa data replication diffs are found in the redaction-period directory on planet. planet.openstreetmap.org/redaction-period. These diffs will only serve the period up until the switch to the new license. Mappers have requested these diffs for the redaction period. General consumers of OSM data may choose to consume these diffs or not at their discretion.

ODbL diffs will be located in another directory to be announced in future.

During the redaction period it is recommended that editors save their work early and often to reduce the chances of, and the complexity of conflicts with the back ground redaction process.

Bulk GPS point data


OpenStreetMap contributors have used track files from their GPSr devices for years while improving OSM data. They have shared those track files and the track points have been available to other mappers via editors and the web site. Now we are providing a way for you to get all of those points at once.

Announcing planet.osm.org/gps

This is the collected GPS point data from the first seven and a half years of OpenStreetMap. It is a very large collection of points and it is very raw data.

  • the compressed file is 7GBytes in size
  • uncompressed, the file is a 55GByte text file
  • the data consists of coordinate pairs only, with no track file or meta data
  • points were contributed by thousands of users
  • points were contributed as thousands of distinct track files
  • the data includes 2,770,233,904 points

Is this a big deal?

This might be the largest collection of Open Data GPS points published. Do you know of larger collections? Tell us in the comments.

Working with this file might not be your cup of tea. Over time, I expect that tools will emerge from the community to make this data easier to manage. For now, it is raw and it is extensive.

All of this data has been previously available to OpenStreetMap contributors in other forms, via editors and the web site. This file provides a new way to get the same data and to get all of it at once.

Example data

If you do decide to work with the file, this is the format that you can expect.

-900000000,1771882380
-900000000,1293757490
-891154290,1237501070
-877697750,1653442410
-871875000,1589069750
-871875000,1237507350
-843750000,1350007780
-843750000,1153132660
-843750000,1040632590
-843750000,1012507800
-843750000,1012507340
-824414060,1082922390
-815625000,1575007660
-805627440,1579614290
-805517580,1579284700
-805517580,1578845240
-804473020,1373773550
-787500000,1237507380
-787500000,1181257510
-787500000,1096882780
-787499970,1096882780
-778591613,1666901550
-778591613,1666898345
-778591384,1666911621

What format is that?

These are comma separated, raw lat / lon coordinates in a simple text format. To get the coordinates divide each number by 10**7. The points are sorted by location, starting in the far southeast of the globe (90 S,180 E) and moving northwest.

Thanks

Thanks as always to the hundreds of thousands of OpenStreetMap contributors over the seven-plus years of the project so far. Thanks to the syadmins for moving this data to a place where we can all access it.

This version of the GPS data file is CC-By-SA and published by OpenStreetMap and Contributors. The image in this article is a visualization of some of this point data in Europe. The image is licensed similarly and was created by Dave Stubbs.

OpenStreetMap layer added to Yahoo! JAPAN Local

March 29, 2012 – The OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan (OSMFJ) and The OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) announce the release of a new OpenStreetMap layer for Yahoo!JAPAN map services. The new OSM layer is available on Yahoo! JAPAN Local (see the map here)

New OpenStreetMap layer on Yahoo!Loco

2011 Yahoo! JAPAN data donation

On March 6th, 2011, Yahoo! JAPAN handed over nation-wide map data to OSMF Japan. The data was originally owned by ALPS corporation, which merged with Yahoo!JAPAN. The OSM community got permission to import and use this data.
Note that the Yahoo! JAPAN ALPS data is not the map data used by Yahoo.com or Yahoo.co.jp. The maps at Yahoo.com and Yahoo.co.jp are not permitted for use by OSM (see the ‘YahooJapanALPS Data’ wiki page).

OpenStreetMap layer showing Sendai area

Mobile maps

The new OSM layer is also available for Yahoo! JAPAN Local mobile. OSM with its frequently updated data is very useful for many map users.

OpenStreetMap Yahoo! JAPAN Local layer mobile site.

About OpenStreetMap Foundation

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a UK-registered not-for-profit organization that supports the OpenStreetMap Project. The OpenStreetMap Project based at OpenStreetMap.org, is the worldwide mapping effort that includes more than 500,000 volunteers around the globe. The foundation consists of members from around the world who elect its board of directors. Much of the foundation’s extensive work is done in the background, yet is critical to the ongoing functioning and growth of the OpenStreetMap Project.

About OSM Foundation Japan

The OpenStreetMap Foundation Japan (OSMF Japan) is an organisation that performs fundraising and supports the Japanese community; it does not control the project or “own” the OSM data. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data and to providing geospatial data for anybody to use and share.

http://www.osmf.jp/news/pressrelease20120329

Service schedule March – April 2012

The long awaited and eagerly anticipated license upgrade is coming soon, the conclusion of a multi-year process. To minimise disruption to OpenStreetMap mappers and users, we’re taking the opportunity to install our new database server (funded by your generous contributions) at the same time – reducing the total amount of downtime needed.

Please be aware of the following service schedule and the list of dates further on in this article. The license upgrade will start with the database server migration. All times and dates are subject to change: our volunteers are working flat out on this, so thanks in advance for your patience and support.

Mappers

There will be a several-day period of limited API availability. The API will be Read Only while the database is moved to the new database server, ramoth. This new database server was funded by your contributions during the December 2011 fund raising campaign. No map editing will be possible while the API is Read Only.

During the remainder of the upgrade, the API should operate normally. Please postpone bulk edits where possible, until after the license upgrade is complete. As always with system improvements, your patience while you find items to refine is appreciated. Consider monitoring the friendly OSM IRC chat channel, #osm on irc.oftc.net, if you have questions.

We would ask mappers who have not yet agreed (or otherwise) to the new terms to log into OSM before the downtime starts on 1st April (0800 UTC) and signal their intention. We are pleased that the vast majority of OSM data will be unaffected by the license change, and thank all the mappers who have thus far consented to their data being distributed under the new license.

Data consumers

The typical planet file scheduled for this week has been postponed. The final old license planet file will be created from 01 April 2012 data. It will be published once the planet file generation completes which may be delayed by a few days.

The old license replication diff service will stop when the database goes to Read Only mode for the server migration. A new license replication diff service will begin at the completion of the license upgrade from a new address. There will be another message with details for using the new diffs when you are ready to start consuming them.

Important Dates

These dates and times are subject to change without notice.

  • 1st April: Enter Read-only mode. 8am UTC
  • 4th April: End of downtime. Enter Read-write mode on new server. Our estimate is that this will be in the morning, but could be subject to change.
  • 5th-6th April: bbox-based live-data tests of rebuild logic.
  • 7th April: Start automated processing of all remaining non-clean objects.
  • 9th April: Progress report and estimation of remaining license upgrade time.
  • To be Determined: On completion of the processing, subject to satisfaction with the outcome we can re-declare the dataset to be ODbL. Immediately afterwards, a first new license planet file will be generated/published, and diff creation will resume.

Thanks

Thanks, as always, to the many people who make OpenStreetMap great. These people include: the countless mappers who have improved the data, the operations volunteers who make so many things “just work”, the programmers who make participating in OSM easier every day, the donors who provide the hardware and hosting we rely upon.

Many of you ‘overlap’ in more than one of these areas. Please be aware that the thanks are cumulative. 🙂

[As excerpted from Dermot McNally’s announcement. Context added from additional sources.]